“Fringe,” Season 3, Episode 20

• Courtesy of Fox
• “MY SONIC SCREWDRIVER WILL ATTRACT THE ‘DOCTOR WHO’ FANS AND SAVE OUR RATINGS: Walternate and Evil Brandon

The episode titled “6:02 A.M, EST” is the first of Season 3’s final three episodes, bringing the past year’s worth of conflicts and Cold War tensions between the alternate Earths to a head. Despite having plenty of Big Moments, my favorite was one of the smallest. Peter was just about to mess with the Stargate Doomsday Machine, and Walter stopped him to rub some “electroconductive gel” on Peter’s hands, with hopes of protecting him from high-tech gimcrackery. It was just like an overprotective Dad squirting hand sanitizer on a little kid in a fussy show of concern and love, and a touchingly human gesture amid the potential collision of worlds.

Many of the other big and small moments of “6:02 A.M, EST” seemed a little too on the nose. When the farmer drove his truck into a cloud of locusts, it felt enough like Armageddon that we didn’t need him to come out and say “It’s like the blessed apocalypse.” Then his goats act all weird and there’s an ominous flash of light.